Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal have been eager to make “The Historical past of Sound” (out September 12, from Mubi) for 5 years. However the two actors have been each in such demand that it stored being pushed again till they lastly turned obtainable on the identical time.
Now, O’Connor finds himself within the odd place of getting to advertise 4 films popping out this fall. Is he drained? “Yeah, I’m,” he stated on Zoom simply after the Telluride Movie Pageant. “I’ve maxed out just a little bit.”
The 2 actors met through the pandemic, on Zoom, after O’Connor watched “Regular Individuals” and like many people, believed he was discovering an thrilling younger expertise. He emailed his American agent: “You need to see this child. He’s superb.” His agent had already signed him. It seems Mescal had been watching O’Connor, as properly. The 2 obtained on famously, and have been pals ever since. (Try their hilarious latest look on “The Tonight Present Starring Jimmy Fallon.”)
“The Historical past of Sound” director Oliver Hermanus went forward with primarily the primary draft of the script about two people music collectors in love, Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor) who journey the South trawling for cool songs to file for posterity. “It’s the primary script that Ben Shattuck had ever written,” stated O’Connor. “All of us cherished the brief story. He delivered a script a couple of month later, and it was excellent, miraculous. Paul and I have been continually unavailable, and we each refused to make it with anybody else. So we’d get a date in, after which we kick it down the highway, after which another person would get one other job. So we kick it down the highway. And in the long run, there was this three week hole between me going off to do ‘Challengers’ press and ‘La Chimera’ press. And so we shot all my stuff first in three weeks, after which I left Paul and Oliver to do it. The script was so good; it felt like a type of tasks the place you may lead with intuition, within the data that I used to be taking part in reverse Paul, who’s so gifted. It felt like a breeze.”
The 2 males reunited at Telluride over Labor Day. It was O’Connor’s second time on the pageant, after “La Chimera” two years in the past. Then he was capable of attend as a result of he had been capturing Max Walker-Silverman’s “Rebuilding” (Bleecker Avenue, November 7) close by. The micro-budget indie (Sundance 2025) a couple of farm group recovering from wildfires had wangled a allow to shoot through the Actors Strike. “‘Rebuilding‘ was probably the most shifting filmmaking experiences I’ve ever had,” stated O’Connor. “There’s a hopefulness to it. It’s a small crew, and we have been pitched up in the midst of nowhere in a city referred to as Alamosa in Colorado. I went on the market to work on a ranch for just a little bit earlier than we began.”
“The Historical past of Sound,” whereas it includes a romance, is just not overtly attractive. The 2 males fall in love for a time, nevertheless it’s an mental relationship, a shared love of music. Mescal’s Lionel is extra comfy along with his sexuality than O’Connor’s David. “At one level David says, ‘Do you are worried about this?’” stated O’Connor. “It’s’s clearly one thing he’s thought-about. We later discover out that he’s married. He’s contending along with his sexuality at instances. David feels disgrace for quite a few causes. I used to be drawn to the story as a result of I discovered the rapid mental attraction thrilling and refreshing. I additionally cherished the thought of exploring synesthesia and music being related to reminiscence, however principally my attraction to that character and to this story was to do with grief, in all its types.”
O’Connor had misplaced somebody he cared deeply concerning the 12 months earlier than. “The previous few years, ‘La Chimera,’ loads of the work I’ve been doing, has been attempting to compute that. What ‘Historical past of Sound’ grabbed for me was the thought of our recollections of somebody. Paul and I might usually speak concerning the scenes we have been doing. Have been these factual scenes, or are these, by means of Lionel’s eyes, his recollections of that summer season? And are they due to this fact influenced by what he is aware of now? That performs into the moments of disappointment that David feels, or the second of pleasure and enjoyable and playfulness that they’ve.”
In each “The Historical past of Sound” and “The Mastermind” (October 17, Mubi) O’Connor, who grew up within the West of England, needed to maneuver his mouth round an American accent, “with nice problem,” he stated. “I’ve misplaced the accent now. However the letter R is swallowed. You do some gymnastics in your mouth to say the letter R. It’s drawn out, whereas the American accent is a relaxed R, and so it’s troublesome for me to maneuver my mouth in the best way that it’s speculated to for an American accent. It takes me a very long time to get it proper.”
After he shot “The Historical past of Sound” in January and February of 2024, O’Connor went off and did the “Challengers” and “La Chimera” press tour, after which joined Rian Johnson’s ensemble for “Knives Out,” adopted by Massachusetts heist caper “The Mastermind” on the finish of the 12 months.
Clearly, O’Connor is a Kelly Reichardt fan. “She makes the flicks I wish to watch,” he stated. “I discover them so humorous. And there’s usually tragedy, and there’s usually mundane parts and typically, even, like in our film, after I’m placing the images up in that barn, that shot is totally ridiculous. I like sitting with one thing. I don’t wish to be rushed after I watch issues. And Kelly does that so superbly. To do this form of a job is bliss to me.”
“The Mastermind” was filmed on 35mm in lengthy takes and immersed O’Connor, who was born in 1990, into the ’70s. His character, Mooney, wears checkered shirts and brown corduroy and drives a gold ’64 Chevy Nova. “These automobiles are chaotic,” he stated. “They’re so exhausting to drive, they’re lovely machines. However the wheel, it takes about three full turns to take a slight proper flip. Kelly and I spent a very long time watching documentaries and sharing pictures and art work from the interval.”
Mooney is the daddy of younger boys dealing (poorly) with male duty, as he’s not fulfilling his position as breadwinner neither is he going off to warfare. “There’s this post-60s political, problematic thought about our duty to peace and the Vietnam Struggle,” stated O’Connor. “He’s too previous to be referred to as up. He’s unemployed. He’s an artist. And males who’re artists, who will not be working, there’s disgrace to that. He’s obtained an enormous ego and low self-worth. That interval did one thing to somebody like Mooney.”
Reichardt and O’Connor took a very long time to determine which artworks Mooney was going to steal. “Arthur Dove is a superb artist, however on the time, his work wasn’t value something,” stated O’Connor. “You’re not going to get wealthy fast from some Arthur Doves, notably at the moment. They’re of a selected style. Mooney wouldn’t steal a Picasso, as a result of that’s mainstream, he’s filled with ego. Sure, the grand heist fulfills the ego. But in addition, ‘if I’m going to steal artwork, I would like individuals to know that I’m an artwork lover, I do know artwork.’ So Arthur Dove fulfills that. I didn’t steal any previous artist. I stole the up-and-coming artist that the common Joe doesn’t learn about. So it’s a degree of satisfaction for him. The way it goes so mistaken? He’s deluded. He has no thought how a lot he screwed up. He’s utterly in denial all through.”
Subsequent up: The forged for the untitled Steven Spielberg science-fiction film (Common, June 12, 2026) written by David Koepp contains Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Emily Blunt and Colman Domingo, in addition to O’Connor. “It’s Spielberg at his finest,” stated O’Connor. “There couldn’t be a extra Spielberg film. On my first day on set with him, I stood in a nondescript place, and there was rain, drips coming off the ceiling of this place, and an enormous beam of sunshine from a automobile headlight. And a few smoke. I assumed, ‘That is so Spielberg.’ I had an excellent expertise. He’s all the things that you simply dream him to be.”
O’Connor performs a priest in “Wake Up Lifeless Man” (November 26, Netflix), the third installment of Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” collection, alongside Daniel Craig, Kerry Washington, Glenn Shut, Josh Brolin, and Andrew Scott. “It’s a tremendous stacked up forged,” he stated, “and I used to be simply part of it.”
Joel Coen’s second solo outing “Jack of Spades” is midway by means of capturing in Scotland. “The power on set is concentrated,” stated O’Connor. “The expertise of being directed by him may be one of many biggest ones I’ve had.”
There’s a world the place O’Connor would run away and go lacking, get again to his backyard within the West of England, make pots, and never do any performing for a very long time. However that’s an alternate universe. “I began within the theater, with a great variety of years of auditioning and auditioning and getting turned down and turned down, being on the Royal Shakespeare Firm, or within the Donmar and balancing that with working in pubs and eating places,” stated O’Connor. “What that does to you is, at any time when a job finishes, you genuinely suppose this could possibly be the final, and when you have imposter syndrome, like I do, and like most actors do, you’re going, this subsequent one would be the one the place they go ‘Ah, we have been mistaken. He’s garbage.’ So, you’ve at all times obtained that needling away behind your thoughts, which makes it troublesome.”
He admits he could have overextended himself in a single sense: “there’s a component of thriller, which possibly we’ve misplaced, and that concept of an occasion film popping out seems like a distant factor,” he stated. He’s going again to theater in Clifford Odets’ “Golden Boy” on the West Finish. “You gained’t be seeing 4 movies come out on the identical time for a short time. That’s all I say.”